Monday, December 14, 2009

Sparkling Strawberry KitKat

Back when I was a kid, I used to watch "Let's Make a Deal" at 3:00 pm most weekday afternoons. This was when the host was Monty Hall. I hear that there is some new version out that is rather different than the one that kept my after-school-child brain occupied.

One of the things about this game show was that people would win pretty good prizes and the host would ask them if they'd like to trade what they had in hand for what was behind the curtain or for what was "in the box" that some leggy model would wheel out. Sometimes, there was a much better item in the box, and sometimes it was a booby prize. I think people often gave up the bird in the hand for the dog doo in the box because it's hard to pass up a mystery in a box.

Enter this sparkling strawberry KitKat. This is the second strawberry KitKat I've sampled, and the other was not great. However, I just had to find out what was in this particular box. What could Nestle possibly do to make this "sparkling"? Before I broke the seal, I mulled it over and thought that they may have put air bubbles in it a la the Aero chocolates or perhaps they would put little Pop Rocks type of candies in it so that it sparked in your mouth as we've had that type of thing before in Japan. I also wondered if there was glitter in the candy.

When I finally peeled off the wrapper, I was disappointed to see the same Pepto-Bismal pink color as other berry bars. There were no bubbles or glitter. This isn't the KitKat for "Hello Kitty" fans, it seems. (I have it on good authority that glitter is an integral part of that particular bit of fandom.) I looked up the information on Nestle's KitKat site, and I was still no closer to knowing why this is called "sparkling". They only mention that it's made with a particular type of strawberry.

This smelled like white-chocolate-based strawberry candy and that was not especially encouraging. The coating is, like many of these types of KitKats, quite soft. The main difference is that there is a strong tang to the strawberry coating on this bar. This almost citrus-like kick makes all of the difference in a sweet bar like this. It not only gave the flavor some depth, but made it seem more like real strawberry flavor.

This KitKat was introduced on December 7 and is at the standard price of 126 yen ($1.43) so it should be around for awhile if you're interested in sampling it. If you're a strawberry fan, this is a no brainer for you to try. If you don't like strawberry confections, you may still like this as I enjoyed it despite not being a great fan of such treats.